How to Manage Table Maintenance Dialogs in SAP ERP

DevWorkbench Sunday August 17th, 2014

Modifying a table maintenance dialog after a table change

Let’s assume you have to change your table after the table maintenance dialog was already generated. You don’t want to delete the entire table and re-create it, especially since there might be a lot of data in it already. In my example, I’ve added another field to my table that I want to be able to maintain.

Test table was changed

If I would open the maintenance dialog now, I would still see only one field that can be maintained. That means that the generated function group must be updated so it knows about the new field. Luckily, we don’t have to do that ourselves, but we can rely on the table maintenance generator again. Open it via Utilities > Table Maintenance Generator and click the edit button ().

Re-Generate Maintenance Dialog

In the popup that appears, select the reason for change. In my case, it was a new field, but it could also be something else – you can select multiple options. In the next popup, provide the details. I’m using a one step maintenance dialog, so only the overview screen needs to be re-generated. Also, I did add a normal field and no key field. Continue to re-generate the table maintenance dialog.

After the system has generated the function group again, you should now be able to maintain the new fields in your maintenance dialog also.

Table Maintenance Dialog Updated

In the next posts, I’ll discuss ways to make this dialog more usable. For example, we will implement a foreign key check so I can only enter data for company codes that already exist. I will also create a maintenance view to display additional information that makes the maintenance of data easier for the end user.